


The Ground Beneath Her Feet

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Sansan secret valentine on tumblr, for tumblr user stainedepiphany. A series of what if end scenarios based on U2's The Gound Beneath Her Feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ground Beneath Her Feet

He finds her underground. Down a thousand stairs deep into the rock of the Vale, she has been kept here for a long time. He knows it’s her even curled up as she is, he knows it’s her even with muddied brown hair and dressed in wool instead of silk. Her fingers are bloodied to match Littlefinger's ruined eyes and her knife is bloodied to match the gaping, messy wound at his neck. When she looks up Sandor doesn't think she recognises him. Her dress is soaked in blood and she is smiling the dazed smile of someone on the edges of shock and he can wait for her to know him again.

“His eyes,” she starts slowly. “He looked at me like I was the whole of the world. But I think he hated me too.”

“Right,” Sandor says, his voice coming to him slow and sounding worn through already. They have to leave, but he’s scared to hurry her lest she snap into a worse kind of terror.

“ You've come to rescue me again.” Sansa's eyes sharpen, finally focus like she’s actually seeing him. “I think I will let you this time.” She gets to her feet, dropping the knife onto the marble floor. Her eyes are slate and sky, she’s as stiff-stood and rigid as the cliffs of the Eyrie, but brittle enough to shatter. He would have killed Littlefinger even worse than she did, he thinks.

~

He finds her in Hell. Inside burning stone in frostbite cold. He fails this time, as the flames lick at his feet and turn his blood to ice. He can’t beat fire, he can’t even move and her screams rise higher and higher until they sound almost like a song. A keening, terrible song that Sansa would never sing. He fails her this time and he will fail in everything after. Robert Strong will melt his face to bones, wake up the Hound to kill him again, all these twice born forces of nature. He fails Sansa and the North eats him alive.

~

He finds her in Winterfell with a mountain of blood at her feet and a pack of wolves stalking the courtyard, licking their wounds. Ser Robert Strong ( _the Mountain That Rides_ ) brought down by a slip of a girl with her nose red from cold. Her men, the Stark loyalists she’s gathered as she made her way from the Vale, look to be in various states of shock as they wipe dark clotted blood from their swords and edge uneasily away from the animals. She stands to receive him and there are wolves under her hands but the biggest one, a ragged direwolf bitch, keeps her distance. It isn't her wolf.

“A gift,” she says shakily, wrapping her cloak around her shoulders more firmly. “I wanted to keep him alive for you, but Nymeria had other ideas.”

“Seven Hells, little bird, stick to songs,” Sandor's voice is ragged with shock. He doesn't sheath his sword, not yet, not with wolves all around and a tower building burning and a lot of the men looking at him with undisguised hatred. Not even if they are her wolves and her men and it’s her tower.

_There was a girl who once had flames for hair, once had snakes for hair, but now she thinks it is the earth._ My skin has turned from porcelain to ivory to steel. My hair has turned from fire to poison to dirt. _The girl is made of the strongest things of nature, the girl is made of the North. The girl might rule if she is pushed hard enough. And Sansa Stark has been pushed._

When she faints, she makes sure it’s away from the eyes of her men, and Sandor is there to catch the Queen of the North.

~

He finds her grave. She was cut down in a rage by the Bastard Bolton who didn't take kindly to her claim for the North. They say she is lucky to have died so quickly. They say she is lucky there was no dog named for her in the Bastard’s kennels. Bolton died soon after, but no one is sure who killed him. Sandor wishes it were him, would have pulled his insides out with his hands.

Sansa is buried in Stark grey and white and a Kingsguard cloak and not even the people who bury her know where that came from but there are rumours of the Lannister's turncloak who disappeared after Blackwater. Sandor disappears quickly to somewhere no one knows him and he dreams of his little bird day and night. He is found by her wolf bitch sister and they go back together and destroy everyone that looks at them wrong and everything that hurt Sansa. Arya tears Cersei to pieces and Sandor doesn't care about anything and they die young, Arya cold and Sandor burnt.

~

He finds her in the Vale, and this is the truth. Alayne Stone has more friends there than Petyr Baelish ever did. He fell into the sky and no one cared, she charmed everyone until they loved her. There are no guards to stop them, no drawn swords in the shadows and no screaming Septa’s raising the alarm. Only Mya Stone who pads beside them on silent feet and smirks at Sandor like she knows a thousand untrue stories.

After that he is the wall behind her, sword drawn and terrifying if he needs to be. She is scared of him still, he knows and he is glad for it, she should be scared of him, it’s safer. She gathers up armies like lost sheep and gives them to Lord Commander Snow. He still calls her little bird and she calls him Sandor and never, ever Ser. 

They don’t talk much. Sandor mutters and Sansa sighs. She dreams too, of washing blood from her hands, and the blood is Petyr's and Cersei's and Joffrey's and even Arya's. Everyone she has hated, even if it seems a small hate now. Her teeth are cold behind her lips as she smiles. She dreams of eyes grey as falling ash and a kiss, not a kiss, how the air feels before a kiss. When she’s awake she dreams too, of a girl called Sansa Stark who had a family.

She grows up without warning, but stays a little bird to him. Old and young all at once, in her eyes and in her hands. A myriad of opposites, hair like fire and eyes like ice. She finds ways to touch him and he finds ways to avoid it. Her bastard brother’s armies, the ones she found him, call her their Maiden Queen even after Jon is crowned and Sandor breaks the teeth of anyone who makes jokes or even speaks her name the wrong way.

One day she sings to him and he remembers the fire and the blood and her fear and his fear and he almost bolts. But her eyes hold him and he isn't the same as he was and neither is she. Once there was a mad dog, a hellhound, fire and charcoal, steel and teeth, anger and fear. Once there was a little bird, golden and caged. He doesn't know what she is singing, doesn't hear the words, doesn't care because _he isn't the same as he was and neither is she_. She has to raise herself onto the tips of her toes to reach, but her fingers trace his scars like she is trying to learn them and her voice is soft and quiet, low in her throat, still singing. He growls to match and lifts her to his lips and the kiss is rough and rushed and when Sansa drops to her feet she is flushed and smiling. She leaves the room and he doesn't ask where she’s going but he follows her and he follows her and he follows.


End file.
